The Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research (PEAR)

The brainchild of Robert G. Jahn, who, in 1979, when he was Dean of the
School of Engineering and Applied Science at Princeton University, claimed
he wanted “to pursue rigorous scientific study of the interaction of human
consciousness with sensitive physical devices, systems, and processes
common to contemporary engineering practice.” In short, he wanted to be a parapsychologist and test psychokinesis
(PK) and remote viewing (called remote
perception by the PEAR folks).
The PEAR folks are best known for their study of the mind influencing the
behavior of machines, so this entry will focus on that work.

Scientists have been unable to find any clear and decisive evidence for
psychokinesis. Those who
claimed to move objects with only the power of their mind use tricks such as
blowing on objects, moving them with thin threads, and using static charges
to move objects. Some parapsychologists have not given up the chase,
however. They began searching for micro-psychokinesis (MPK), minds
affecting machines in ways that can't be detected except by statistics. Just
as significant variance from chance in an ESP experiment is taken as
evidence of ESP (the psi
assumption), so a statistically significant deviation from chance in an
MPK experiment is taken as evidence of MPK.

The PEAR lab shut down in February 2007 to a yawning
scientific community.

In the 1960s, physicist and parapsychologist
Helmut Schmidt started using random event generators to do MPK experiments.
According to Dean Radin (1997), over the years Schmidt provided solid
scientific support for the MPK hypothesis (or
precognition, since there does not seem to be any way to tell the
difference between MPK and precognition. Is the mind affecting the outcome
of a random event generator or is anticipating what the outcome will be?)

In 1986, Jahn, Brenda Dunne, and Roger Nelson
reported on millions of trials with 33 subjects over seven years trying to use
their minds to override random number generators (RNG). Think of the RNG as
producing zeros and ones. Over the long haul, the laws of probability
predict that in a truly random sequence, there should be 50% of each
produced. The subjects in the PEAR experiments tried to use their minds to
produce more zeros (or ones, depending on the assignment). In short, the
PEAR people did what many drivers do when they try to use their thoughts to
make a red light turn green.

Radin thinks the PEAR
group replicated Schmidt's work in 258 experimental studies and 127 control
studies. C. E. M. Hansel examined the studies done
after 1969 and before 1987 that attempted to replicate Schmidt’s work. He
notes: “The
main fact that emerges from this data is that 71 experiments gave a result
supporting Schmidt’s findings and 261 experiments failed to do so” (Hansel
1989: 185). That is the beauty of meta-analysis:
you can transform a failure rate of nearly 4 to 1 into a grand success.

In 1987, Dean Radin and Nelson did a meta-analysis of all RNG
experiments done between 1959 and 1987 and found that they produced odds against chance beyond a
trillion to one (Radin 1997: 140). This sounds impressive, but as Radin
says “in terms of a 50% hit rate, the overall experimental effect,
calculated per study, was about 51 percent, where 50 percent would be expected by
chance” [emphasis added] (141). A couple of sentences later, Radin gives a
more precise rendering of "about 51 percent" by noting that the overall
effect was "just under 51 percent." Similar results were found with
experiments where people tried to use their minds to affect the outcome of
rolls of the dice, according to Radin. And, when Nelson did his own
analysis of all the PEAR data (1,262 experiments involving 108 people), he
found similar results to the earlier RNG studies but "with odds against
chance of four thousand to one" (Radin 1997: 143). Nelson also claimed
that there were no "star" performers.

However, according to Ray Hyman, “the percentage of hits
in the intended direction was only 50.02%" in the PEAR studies (Hyman 1989:
152). And one ‘operator’ (the term used to describe the subjects in these
studies) was responsible for 23% of the total data base. Her hit rate
was 50.05%. Take out this operator and the hit rate becomes 50.01%.
According to John McCrone, "Operator 10," believed to be a PEAR staff
member, "has been involved in 15% of the 14 million trials, yet contributed
to a full half of the total excess hits" (McCrone
1994). According to Dean Radin, the criticism that there "was any one
person responsible for the overall results of the experiment...was tested
and found to be groundless" (Radin 1997: 221). His source for this claim
is a 1991 article by Jahn et al. in the Journal of Scientific
Exploration, "Count population profiles in engineering anomalies
experiments" (5:205-32). However, Jahn gives the data for his experiments
in
Margins of Reality: The Role of Consciousness in the Physical World
(Harcourt Brace, 1988, p. 352-353).
McCrone has done the calculations and found that 'If [operator
10's] figures are taken out of the data pool, scoring in the "low
intention" condition falls to chance while "high intention" scoring drops
close to the .05 boundary considered weakly significant in scientific
results."

According to McCrone, the "size of the effect is about .1
percent, meaning that for every thousand electronic tosses, the random event
generator is producing about one more head or tail than it should by chance
alone" (McCrone 1994).
Jahn says that the measured effect of MPK was "not large enough that
you're going to notice it over a brief experiment, but over very long
periods of study, we see a systematic departure of the behavior of the
machine in correlation with what the operator wants it to do" (Park 2000:
198). Most experiments in medicine or psychology use fewer than 100 trials,
or perhaps a few hundred at most. Big trials will have 25,000 or more
subjects. Massive prospective studies might survey 250,000 people. The most
commonly used P-value in the social sciences and medical studies is P<0.05,
where there is a one in twenty chance that the result is a statistical
fluke. The 95% confidence interval, used as a standard in most of these
studies, is arbitrary, however. It can be traced back to the 1930s and R. A.
Fisher. There is nothing sacred about the standard, but it was not
introduced to be used with studies having millions of data points. The RNG
studies go into the millions of trials, allowing a very small effect to
generate a very large statistic. When we’re dealing with small effects and
millions of trials "even the slightest departure from the assumptions might
suffice to produce artificially significant outcomes" (Hyman 1989: 151). The
main assumption that Jahn and his colleagues made may not be warranted. "It
is not clear that any of these machines is truly random. Indeed, it is
generally believed that there are no truly random machines. It may be that
lack of randomness only begins to show up after many trials" (Park 2000:
199).

These data should remind us that statistical significance
does not imply importance. Science that claims to have identified barely
detectable causal agents observed near the threshold of sensation, which are
nevertheless asserted to have been detected with great accuracy and be of
great significance, is one of the signs of what Irving Langmuir called
pathological science and
Bob Park calls voodoo science.

Based on the results of these experiments, Radin
claims that “researchers have produced persuasive, consistent, replicated
evidence that mental intention is associated with the behavior of …physical
systems” (Radin 1997: 144). That sounds like a hasty conclusion to me. He also claims that “the experimental results are
not likely due to chance, selective reporting, poor experimental design,
only a few individuals, or only a few experimenters” (Radin 1997: 144). He's
probably right except for the bit about it being unlikely that the
experimental results are due to chance or to only a few individuals.

Jahn, six of his associates, and
PEAR even have a patent (US5830064)
on an “Apparatus and method for distinguishing events which collectively
exceed chance expectations and thereby controlling an output.” The PEAR people are so convinced of the breakthrough nature of their
work that they have incorporated as Mindsong Inc. They claim their
corporation "is developing a range of breakthrough products and research
tools based on a provocative new technology—proprietary microelectronics
which are responsive to the inner states of living systems." One of their
breakthrough products is some software "that allows you to influence, with
your mind, which of two images will be displayed on your computer screen."
They also sell a device for several hundred dollars that lets you do your
own testing of mental influence on randomized outputs.

On their website, PEAR states that after more than twenty-five
years they are shutting down and moving on. "Over the next few years, PEAR
will be concluding its experimental operations at Princeton University,"
says the notice on their "Future" tab.*
It seems that Bob Jahn and Brenda Dunne are not quitting, however, for
they are looking for a number of like-minded
folks who want to spend their time or money on the study of minds
interacting with machines. They've set up a new outfit called
International
Consciousness Research Laboratories. As their first fundraiser, they
are selling "a multi-DVD/CD set entitled The PEAR Proposition" for
a mere $62, including psychic shipping and handling. The replication
studies are available on a blank DVD disc, available at no cost to true
believers.

Perhaps the most disconcerting thing about PEAR is
the fact that suggestions by critics that should have been considered were
routinely ignored. Physicist Bob Park reports, for example, that he
suggested to Jahn two types of experiments that would have bypassed the
main criticisms aimed at PEAR. Why not do a double-blind experiment? asked
Park. Have a second RNG determine the task of the operator and do not let
this determination be known to the one recording the results. This could
have eliminated the charge of experimenter bias. Another experiment,
however, could have eliminated most criticism. Park suggested that PEAR
have operators try to use their minds to move a "state-of-the-art
microbalance"
(Park 2008, 138-139). A microbalance can make precise measurements on the
order of a millionth of a gram. One doesn't need to be clairvoyant to
figure out why this suggestion was never heeded.

STATS - Statistics and the Media
(This site had nothing to do with PEAR but since PEAR's claims are based
upon statistical analysis of data, I thought some readers might like to
look at a site that does nothing but look at statistical data and
examine what some people try to do with that data.)